Ryan Lawrence

Daily News Staff Writer

Cliff Lee retired each of the four hitters he faced on Monday night in San Francisco before the beach-blond, lanky kid with the funny swing stepped into the batter's box.

Hunter Pence, who was wearing a Phillies uniform this time last year, ripped a line-drive, solo home run over the left field fence. It was his sixth home run of the year.

Pence went 3-for-3 with a home run and a double in his first game against his old team. He entered Tuesday hitting .297 with an .847 OPS and 20 RBIs.

If he was in a Phillies uniform, Pence's numbers would be the best on the team.

It's been more than nine months since Pence last wore a Phillies uniform, but he still has regrets over the 12 months he spent in Philadelphia.

After hitting .324 with a .954 OPS and 11 home runs in 54 games after arriving from Houston in July of 2011, helping the Phils win a franchise-record 102 games, Pence struggled in 2012. He hit .271 with a .784 OPS in the first four months of the season before two days before the trading deadline, when both he and Shane Victorino were traded to the Giants and Dodgers, respectively.

In the absence of Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, Pence admitted that he tried to do too much.

"That’s 100 percent what I did," Pence said Tuesday afternoon. "And in this game, I say it a lot: you can’t try; you’ve got to trust. And I was trying to make it happen. But there was a great lesson for me in that experience, there was a letting go. there was a lot I had to learn."

Despite being on a Giants team that took off at the end of the season and went on to win its second World Series in three season, Pence said the transition from Philadelphia was a difficult one because he "felt guilty."

"To be honest with you, I felt really guilty," Pence said. "I felt like I did something wrong. Obviously I shouldn’t have looked at it that way, it was the wrong way to look at it. But I was, there was a lot of excitement to be put into this race. But I was heavily invested in bringing the Phillies back, and it felt like… I felt guilty. I felt like it was my fault that it fell apart."

Pence is batting fifth and playing in right field for the Giants again tonight.